In pursuit of a more sophisticated and inclusive American history, the contributors to this book propose new directions for the study of the political history of the republic before the Civil War. In ...
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In pursuit of a more sophisticated and inclusive American history, the contributors to this book propose new directions for the study of the political history of the republic before the Civil War. In ways formal and informal, symbolic and tactile, this political world encompassed blacks, women, entrepreneurs, and Native Americans, as well as the Adamses, Jeffersons, and Jacksons, all struggling in their own ways to shape the new nation and express their ideas of American democracy. Taking inspiration from the new cultural and social histories, these political historians show that the early history of the United States was not just the product of a few “founding fathers,” but was also marked by widespread and passionate popular involvement; print media more politically potent than that of later eras; and political conflicts and influences that crossed lines of race, gender, and class.Less

Beyond the Founders : New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic

Published in print: 2004-11-08

In pursuit of a more sophisticated and inclusive American history, the contributors to this book propose new directions for the study of the political history of the republic before the Civil War. In ways formal and informal, symbolic and tactile, this political world encompassed blacks, women, entrepreneurs, and Native Americans, as well as the Adamses, Jeffersons, and Jacksons, all struggling in their own ways to shape the new nation and express their ideas of American democracy. Taking inspiration from the new cultural and social histories, these political historians show that the early history of the United States was not just the product of a few “founding fathers,” but was also marked by widespread and passionate popular involvement; print media more politically potent than that of later eras; and political conflicts and influences that crossed lines of race, gender, and class.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, French colonists and their Native allies participated in a slave trade that spanned half of North America, carrying thousands of Native Americans into ...
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In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, French colonists and their Native allies participated in a slave trade that spanned half of North America, carrying thousands of Native Americans into bondage in the Great Lakes, Canada, and the Caribbean. This book reveals the dynamics of this system from its origins to the end of French colonial rule. Balancing a vast geographic and chronological scope with careful attention to the lives of enslaved individuals, it gives voice to those who lived through the ordeal of slavery and, along the way, shaped French and Native societies. Rather than telling a simple story of colonial domination and Native victimization, the author argues that Indian slavery in New France emerged at the nexus of two very different forms of slavery: one indigenous to North America and the other rooted in the Atlantic world. The alliances that bound French and Natives together forced a century-long negotiation over the nature of slavery and its place in early American society. Neither fully Indian nor entirely French, slavery in New France drew upon and transformed indigenous and Atlantic cultures in complex and surprising ways. Based on thousands of French and Algonquian-language manuscripts archived in Canada, France, the United States and the Caribbean, the book bridges the divide between continental and Atlantic approaches to early American history. By discovering unexpected connections between distant peoples and places, it sheds new light on a wide range of subjects, including intercultural diplomacy, colonial law, gender and sexuality, and the history of race.Less

Bonds of Alliance : Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France

Brett Rushforth

Published in print: 2012-05-31

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, French colonists and their Native allies participated in a slave trade that spanned half of North America, carrying thousands of Native Americans into bondage in the Great Lakes, Canada, and the Caribbean. This book reveals the dynamics of this system from its origins to the end of French colonial rule. Balancing a vast geographic and chronological scope with careful attention to the lives of enslaved individuals, it gives voice to those who lived through the ordeal of slavery and, along the way, shaped French and Native societies. Rather than telling a simple story of colonial domination and Native victimization, the author argues that Indian slavery in New France emerged at the nexus of two very different forms of slavery: one indigenous to North America and the other rooted in the Atlantic world. The alliances that bound French and Natives together forced a century-long negotiation over the nature of slavery and its place in early American society. Neither fully Indian nor entirely French, slavery in New France drew upon and transformed indigenous and Atlantic cultures in complex and surprising ways. Based on thousands of French and Algonquian-language manuscripts archived in Canada, France, the United States and the Caribbean, the book bridges the divide between continental and Atlantic approaches to early American history. By discovering unexpected connections between distant peoples and places, it sheds new light on a wide range of subjects, including intercultural diplomacy, colonial law, gender and sexuality, and the history of race.

Between 1819 and 1845, as veterans of the Revolutionary War were filing applications to receive pensions for their service, the government was surprised to learn that many of the soldiers were not ...
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Between 1819 and 1845, as veterans of the Revolutionary War were filing applications to receive pensions for their service, the government was surprised to learn that many of the soldiers were not men, but boys, many of whom were under the age of sixteen, and some even as young as nine. In Boy Soldiers of the American Revolution, Caroline Cox reconstructs the lives and stories of this young subset of early American soldiers, focusing on how these boys came to join the army and what they actually did in service. Giving us a rich and unique glimpse into colonial childhood, Cox traces the evolution of youth in American culture in the late eighteenth century, as the accepted age for children to participate meaningfully in society--not only in the military--was rising dramatically. Drawing creatively on sources, such as diaries, letters, and memoirs, Caroline Cox offers a vivid account of what life was like for these boys both on and off the battlefield, telling the story of a generation of soldiers caught between old and new notions of boyhood.Less

Boy Soldiers of the American Revolution

Caroline Cox

Published in print: 2016-04-18

Between 1819 and 1845, as veterans of the Revolutionary War were filing applications to receive pensions for their service, the government was surprised to learn that many of the soldiers were not men, but boys, many of whom were under the age of sixteen, and some even as young as nine. In Boy Soldiers of the American Revolution, Caroline Cox reconstructs the lives and stories of this young subset of early American soldiers, focusing on how these boys came to join the army and what they actually did in service. Giving us a rich and unique glimpse into colonial childhood, Cox traces the evolution of youth in American culture in the late eighteenth century, as the accepted age for children to participate meaningfully in society--not only in the military--was rising dramatically. Drawing creatively on sources, such as diaries, letters, and memoirs, Caroline Cox offers a vivid account of what life was like for these boys both on and off the battlefield, telling the story of a generation of soldiers caught between old and new notions of boyhood.

Building the British Atlantic World is the first book to articulate the shared architectural history of the British Atlantic world; the first to consider British, North American, Caribbean and ...
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Building the British Atlantic World is the first book to articulate the shared architectural history of the British Atlantic world; the first to consider British, North American, Caribbean and African colonial architectures, spaces and places together as the products of a common British Atlantic culture. Atlantic History is a well-established field, however, of the numerous studies available buildings and their fundamental role in framing and maintaining public and private space are rarely considered. Building the British Atlantic World is architecture’s overdue contribution to Atlantic History. From the pioneer colonists of the early seventeenth-century through to American Independence and the maintenance of a very different, much smaller, disparate British Atlantic in the nineteenth century, this book introduces a shared history of building and buildings that transcends national narratives in order to outline a set of complex cultural exchanges between Britain (England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales), America (the North, Mid and Southern Atlantic states), Canada, the Caribbean, Bermuda and West Africa. The ‘British Atlantic World’ and ‘transatlanticism’ are relatively new terms to architectural history but are well-established fields/approaches within social and political History and Literary Studies. Therefore, a further aim of the book is to set out these concepts and, through case studies, demonstrate their value to architectural history.Less

Building the British Atlantic World : "Spaces, Places, and Material Culture, 1600-1850"

Published in print: 2016-04-18

Building the British Atlantic World is the first book to articulate the shared architectural history of the British Atlantic world; the first to consider British, North American, Caribbean and African colonial architectures, spaces and places together as the products of a common British Atlantic culture. Atlantic History is a well-established field, however, of the numerous studies available buildings and their fundamental role in framing and maintaining public and private space are rarely considered. Building the British Atlantic World is architecture’s overdue contribution to Atlantic History. From the pioneer colonists of the early seventeenth-century through to American Independence and the maintenance of a very different, much smaller, disparate British Atlantic in the nineteenth century, this book introduces a shared history of building and buildings that transcends national narratives in order to outline a set of complex cultural exchanges between Britain (England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales), America (the North, Mid and Southern Atlantic states), Canada, the Caribbean, Bermuda and West Africa. The ‘British Atlantic World’ and ‘transatlanticism’ are relatively new terms to architectural history but are well-established fields/approaches within social and political History and Literary Studies. Therefore, a further aim of the book is to set out these concepts and, through case studies, demonstrate their value to architectural history.

This book explores how the Anglo-Cherokee War reshaped the political and cultural landscape of the colonial South. The text chronicles the series of clashes that erupted from 1758 to 1761 between ...
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This book explores how the Anglo-Cherokee War reshaped the political and cultural landscape of the colonial South. The text chronicles the series of clashes that erupted from 1758 to 1761 between Cherokees, settlers, and British troops. The conflict, no insignificant sideshow to the French and Indian War, eventually led to the regeneration of a British-Cherokee alliance. The book reveals how the war destabilized the South Carolina colony and threatened the white coastal elite, arguing that the political and military success of the Cherokees led colonists to a greater fear of slave resistance and revolt and ultimately nurtured South Carolinians' rising interest in the movement for independence.Less

Carolina in Crisis : Cherokees, Colonists, and Slaves in the American Southeast, 1756-1763

Daniel J. Tortora

Published in print: 2015-05-25

This book explores how the Anglo-Cherokee War reshaped the political and cultural landscape of the colonial South. The text chronicles the series of clashes that erupted from 1758 to 1761 between Cherokees, settlers, and British troops. The conflict, no insignificant sideshow to the French and Indian War, eventually led to the regeneration of a British-Cherokee alliance. The book reveals how the war destabilized the South Carolina colony and threatened the white coastal elite, arguing that the political and military success of the Cherokees led colonists to a greater fear of slave resistance and revolt and ultimately nurtured South Carolinians' rising interest in the movement for independence.

This book presents an exploration of illusionistic art in the early United States. It investigates Americans' experiences with material forms of visual deception and argues that encounters with ...
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This book presents an exploration of illusionistic art in the early United States. It investigates Americans' experiences with material forms of visual deception and argues that encounters with illusory art shaped their understanding of knowledge, representation, and subjectivity between 1790 and 1825. Focusing on the work of the well-known Peale family and their Philadelphia Museum, as well as other Philadelphians, the book explores the range of illusions encountered in public spaces, from trompe l'oeil paintings and drawings at art exhibitions to ephemeral displays of phantasmagoria, “Invisible Ladies,” and other spectacles of deception. The book reconstructs the elite and vernacular sites where such art and objects appeared and argues that early national exhibitions doubled as spaces of citizen formation. Within a post-Revolutionary culture troubled by the social and political consequences of deception, keen perception signified able citizenship. Setting illusions into dialogue with Enlightenment cultures of science, print, politics, and the senses, this book demonstrates that pictorial and optical illusions functioned to cultivate but also to confound discernment.Less

Citizen Spectator : Art, Illusion, and Visual Perception in Early National America

Wendy Bellion

Published in print: 2011-02-01

This book presents an exploration of illusionistic art in the early United States. It investigates Americans' experiences with material forms of visual deception and argues that encounters with illusory art shaped their understanding of knowledge, representation, and subjectivity between 1790 and 1825. Focusing on the work of the well-known Peale family and their Philadelphia Museum, as well as other Philadelphians, the book explores the range of illusions encountered in public spaces, from trompe l'oeil paintings and drawings at art exhibitions to ephemeral displays of phantasmagoria, “Invisible Ladies,” and other spectacles of deception. The book reconstructs the elite and vernacular sites where such art and objects appeared and argues that early national exhibitions doubled as spaces of citizen formation. Within a post-Revolutionary culture troubled by the social and political consequences of deception, keen perception signified able citizenship. Setting illusions into dialogue with Enlightenment cultures of science, print, politics, and the senses, this book demonstrates that pictorial and optical illusions functioned to cultivate but also to confound discernment.

This book explores the struggle within the young American nation over the extension of social and political rights after the Revolution. By closely examining the formation and interplay of political ...
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This book explores the struggle within the young American nation over the extension of social and political rights after the Revolution. By closely examining the formation and interplay of political structures and civil institutions in the upper Hudson Valley, ot traces the debates over who should fall within and outside of the legally protected category of citizen. The story of Martin Van Buren—kingpin of New York's Jacksonian “Regency,” president of the United States, and first theoretician of American party politics—threads the narrative, since his views profoundly influenced American understandings of consent and civil society and led to the birth of the American party system. The book imbues local history with national significance, and its analysis of the revolutionary settlement as a dynamic and unstable compromise over the balance of power offers a window onto a local struggle that mirrored the nationwide effort to define American citizenship.Less

Columbia Rising : Civil Life on the Upper Hudson from the Revolution to the Age of Jackson

John L. Brooke

Published in print: 2010-11-15

This book explores the struggle within the young American nation over the extension of social and political rights after the Revolution. By closely examining the formation and interplay of political structures and civil institutions in the upper Hudson Valley, ot traces the debates over who should fall within and outside of the legally protected category of citizen. The story of Martin Van Buren—kingpin of New York's Jacksonian “Regency,” president of the United States, and first theoretician of American party politics—threads the narrative, since his views profoundly influenced American understandings of consent and civil society and led to the birth of the American party system. The book imbues local history with national significance, and its analysis of the revolutionary settlement as a dynamic and unstable compromise over the balance of power offers a window onto a local struggle that mirrored the nationwide effort to define American citizenship.

The Common Cause is about how the founding fathers mobilized political authority and military resistance to defeat their cultural cousins. This study examines the overall shape of mobilization in the ...
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The Common Cause is about how the founding fathers mobilized political authority and military resistance to defeat their cultural cousins. This study examines the overall shape of mobilization in the Revolutionary War, how a discourse evolved delineating friends and enemies in the hopes of garnering support. It focuses on how, through print, patriot leaders propagated certain representations they thought would resonate with a wide colonial audience. Because they had to make the familiar alien, those depictions centered on projecting representations of the British as the equals of dangerous populations within colonial society. To accomplish this vital, difficult task, the founders embraced the most powerful weapons in the colonial cultural arsenal: stereotypes, prejudices, expectations, and fears about violent Indians and African Americans. This book is about the "dark side" of the common cause appeal: that America's fight for independence was also a fight against the king's assistants, namely, Indians and the enslaved. Printed stories about Indians' and slaves' fighting for the British were the basis for patriot leaders' explanations as to why Americans must resist, most importantly in the final grievance of the Declaration of Independence. These stories were the cement of the American union; they then became codified in the first inchoate conceptions of what it meant to belong to the new American republic. The cultural and political exclusion of African Americans and Indians from the rights of American citizens started at the founding itself. American concepts of race and nation were inextricably intertwined from the very start of the American Revolution.Less

The Common Cause : Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution

Robert G. Parkinson

Published in print: 2016-06-27

The Common Cause is about how the founding fathers mobilized political authority and military resistance to defeat their cultural cousins. This study examines the overall shape of mobilization in the Revolutionary War, how a discourse evolved delineating friends and enemies in the hopes of garnering support. It focuses on how, through print, patriot leaders propagated certain representations they thought would resonate with a wide colonial audience. Because they had to make the familiar alien, those depictions centered on projecting representations of the British as the equals of dangerous populations within colonial society. To accomplish this vital, difficult task, the founders embraced the most powerful weapons in the colonial cultural arsenal: stereotypes, prejudices, expectations, and fears about violent Indians and African Americans. This book is about the "dark side" of the common cause appeal: that America's fight for independence was also a fight against the king's assistants, namely, Indians and the enslaved. Printed stories about Indians' and slaves' fighting for the British were the basis for patriot leaders' explanations as to why Americans must resist, most importantly in the final grievance of the Declaration of Independence. These stories were the cement of the American union; they then became codified in the first inchoate conceptions of what it meant to belong to the new American republic. The cultural and political exclusion of African Americans and Indians from the rights of American citizens started at the founding itself. American concepts of race and nation were inextricably intertwined from the very start of the American Revolution.

This sweeping history of popular religion in eighteenth-century New England examines the experiences of ordinary men and women living through extraordinary times. Drawing on an unprecedented quantity ...
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This sweeping history of popular religion in eighteenth-century New England examines the experiences of ordinary men and women living through extraordinary times. Drawing on an unprecedented quantity of letters, diaries, and testimonies, Douglas Winiarski recovers the pervasive and vigorous lay piety of the early eighteenth century. George Whitefield’s preaching tour of 1740 called into question the fundamental assumptions of this thriving religious culture. Incited by Whitefield and fascinated by miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit—visions, bodily fits, and sudden conversions—countless New Englanders broke ranks with family, neighbors, and ministers who dismissed their religious experiences as delusive enthusiasm. The new converts of the so-called Great Awakening, the progenitors of today’s evangelical movement, bitterly assaulted the Congregational establishment. Conflict transformed inclusive parishes into exclusive networks of combative spiritual seekers. Then as now, evangelicalism emboldened ordinary people to question traditional authorities. Their challenge shattered whole communities.Less

Darkness Falls on the Land of Light : Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England

Douglas L. Winiarski

Published in print: 2017-03-01

This sweeping history of popular religion in eighteenth-century New England examines the experiences of ordinary men and women living through extraordinary times. Drawing on an unprecedented quantity of letters, diaries, and testimonies, Douglas Winiarski recovers the pervasive and vigorous lay piety of the early eighteenth century. George Whitefield’s preaching tour of 1740 called into question the fundamental assumptions of this thriving religious culture. Incited by Whitefield and fascinated by miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit—visions, bodily fits, and sudden conversions—countless New Englanders broke ranks with family, neighbors, and ministers who dismissed their religious experiences as delusive enthusiasm. The new converts of the so-called Great Awakening, the progenitors of today’s evangelical movement, bitterly assaulted the Congregational establishment. Conflict transformed inclusive parishes into exclusive networks of combative spiritual seekers. Then as now, evangelicalism emboldened ordinary people to question traditional authorities. Their challenge shattered whole communities.

After his 1728 Virginia-North Carolina boundary expedition, Virginia planter and politician William Byrd II composed two very different accounts of his adventures. The Secret History of the Line was ...
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After his 1728 Virginia-North Carolina boundary expedition, Virginia planter and politician William Byrd II composed two very different accounts of his adventures. The Secret History of the Line was written for private circulation, offering tales of scandalous behavior and political misconduct, peppered with rakish humor and personal satire. The History of the Dividing Line, continually revised by Byrd for decades after the expedition, was intended for the London literary market, though not published in his lifetime. Collating all extant manuscripts, this edition of these two histories provides wide-ranging historical and cultural contexts for both, helping to recreate the social and intellectual ethos of Byrd and his time. Byrd enriched his narratives with material appropriated from earlier authors, many of whose works were in his library—the most extensive in the American colonies. This book identifies here many of Byrd's sources and raises the question: how reliable are histories that build silently upon antecedent texts and present borrowed material as firsthand testimony? In this analysis, the book demonstrates the need for a new category to assess early modern history writing: the hybrid, accretional narrative.Less

The Dividing Line Histories of William Byrd II of Westover

Published in print: 2013-11-01

After his 1728 Virginia-North Carolina boundary expedition, Virginia planter and politician William Byrd II composed two very different accounts of his adventures. The Secret History of the Line was written for private circulation, offering tales of scandalous behavior and political misconduct, peppered with rakish humor and personal satire. The History of the Dividing Line, continually revised by Byrd for decades after the expedition, was intended for the London literary market, though not published in his lifetime. Collating all extant manuscripts, this edition of these two histories provides wide-ranging historical and cultural contexts for both, helping to recreate the social and intellectual ethos of Byrd and his time. Byrd enriched his narratives with material appropriated from earlier authors, many of whose works were in his library—the most extensive in the American colonies. This book identifies here many of Byrd's sources and raises the question: how reliable are histories that build silently upon antecedent texts and present borrowed material as firsthand testimony? In this analysis, the book demonstrates the need for a new category to assess early modern history writing: the hybrid, accretional narrative.

Maps were at the heart of cultural life in the Americas from before colonization to the formation of modern nation-states. The fourteen chapters in this book examine indigenous and European peoples' ...
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Maps were at the heart of cultural life in the Americas from before colonization to the formation of modern nation-states. The fourteen chapters in this book examine indigenous and European peoples' creation and use of maps to better represent and understand the world they inhabited. Drawing from both current historical interpretations and new interdisciplinary perspectives, this collection provides diverse approaches to understanding the multilayered exchanges that went into creating cartographic knowledge in and about the Americas. The introduction provides a critical assessment of the concept of cartography and of the historiography of maps. The individual chapters, then, range widely over space and place, from the imperial reach of Iberian and British cartography to indigenous conceptualizations, including “dirty,” ephemeral maps and star charts, to demonstrate that pre-nineteenth-century American cartography was at once a multiform and multicultural affair. The book not only highlights the collaborative genesis of cartographic knowledge about the early Americas; it also brings to light original archives and innovative methodologies for investigating spatial relations among peoples in the western hemisphere. Taken together, the chapters reveal the role of early American cartographies in shaping popular notions of national space, informing visual perception, animating literary imagination, and structuring the political history of Anglo- and Ibero-America.Less

Early American Cartographies

Published in print: 2011-12-15

Maps were at the heart of cultural life in the Americas from before colonization to the formation of modern nation-states. The fourteen chapters in this book examine indigenous and European peoples' creation and use of maps to better represent and understand the world they inhabited. Drawing from both current historical interpretations and new interdisciplinary perspectives, this collection provides diverse approaches to understanding the multilayered exchanges that went into creating cartographic knowledge in and about the Americas. The introduction provides a critical assessment of the concept of cartography and of the historiography of maps. The individual chapters, then, range widely over space and place, from the imperial reach of Iberian and British cartography to indigenous conceptualizations, including “dirty,” ephemeral maps and star charts, to demonstrate that pre-nineteenth-century American cartography was at once a multiform and multicultural affair. The book not only highlights the collaborative genesis of cartographic knowledge about the early Americas; it also brings to light original archives and innovative methodologies for investigating spatial relations among peoples in the western hemisphere. Taken together, the chapters reveal the role of early American cartographies in shaping popular notions of national space, informing visual perception, animating literary imagination, and structuring the political history of Anglo- and Ibero-America.

This book presents a continental history in its investigation of eighteenth-century diplomacy involving North America and links geographic ignorance about the American West to Europeans' grand ...
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This book presents a continental history in its investigation of eighteenth-century diplomacy involving North America and links geographic ignorance about the American West to Europeans' grand geopolitical designs. The book demonstrates the centrality of hitherto understudied western regions to early American history and shows that a Pacific focus is crucial to understanding the causes, course, and consequences of the Seven Years' War.Less

The Elusive West and the Contest for Empire, 1713-1763

Paul W. Mapp

Published in print: 2011-02-01

This book presents a continental history in its investigation of eighteenth-century diplomacy involving North America and links geographic ignorance about the American West to Europeans' grand geopolitical designs. The book demonstrates the centrality of hitherto understudied western regions to early American history and shows that a Pacific focus is crucial to understanding the causes, course, and consequences of the Seven Years' War.

For a quarter of a century, the United States government operated a system of public trading posts, or factories, in the eastern North American borderland. The factories sold manufactured goods to ...
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For a quarter of a century, the United States government operated a system of public trading posts, or factories, in the eastern North American borderland. The factories sold manufactured goods to Indians at cost and bought their peltry, foodstuffs, and other wares at market rates. They also served as annuity distribution centers and host sites for treaty conferences. The U.S. government used the factories to build its influence in Indian communities, win Native American allies, and (in a few cases) to leverage Indian land sales with factory debts. For their part, Indian men and women turned the trading houses to their own uses: finding alternatives to British and Spanish traders; acquiring gifts and credit; enlisting the factors to resolve interethnic disputes; and selling goods for which the market had softened. Indians ultimately viewed the factories as alliance centers: during the War of 1812 the United States' Native allies employed them as arsenals and rally points, and its Indian adversaries viewed them as targets to capture or destroy. After that war, Superintendent Thomas McKenney tried to revive the factories by tying them to the Indian “civilization” program, advocating use of the system's revenues to fund Indian schools. Congress and the president, however, had come to see Indian alliance as less important than saving public money in an era of fiscal austerity, and fur trading as incompatible with the “civilized” lifeways they wanted Indians to adopt. With some pressure from the American Fur Company, they closed the factories permanently in 1822.Less

Engines of Diplomacy : Indian Trading Factories and the Negotiation of American Empire

David Andrew Nichols

Published in print: 2016-05-23

For a quarter of a century, the United States government operated a system of public trading posts, or factories, in the eastern North American borderland. The factories sold manufactured goods to Indians at cost and bought their peltry, foodstuffs, and other wares at market rates. They also served as annuity distribution centers and host sites for treaty conferences. The U.S. government used the factories to build its influence in Indian communities, win Native American allies, and (in a few cases) to leverage Indian land sales with factory debts. For their part, Indian men and women turned the trading houses to their own uses: finding alternatives to British and Spanish traders; acquiring gifts and credit; enlisting the factors to resolve interethnic disputes; and selling goods for which the market had softened. Indians ultimately viewed the factories as alliance centers: during the War of 1812 the United States' Native allies employed them as arsenals and rally points, and its Indian adversaries viewed them as targets to capture or destroy. After that war, Superintendent Thomas McKenney tried to revive the factories by tying them to the Indian “civilization” program, advocating use of the system's revenues to fund Indian schools. Congress and the president, however, had come to see Indian alliance as less important than saving public money in an era of fiscal austerity, and fur trading as incompatible with the “civilized” lifeways they wanted Indians to adopt. With some pressure from the American Fur Company, they closed the factories permanently in 1822.

Drawing on letters, illustrations, engravings, and neglected manuscripts, this book connects two dramatic transformations in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world—the emergence and growth of the ...
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Drawing on letters, illustrations, engravings, and neglected manuscripts, this book connects two dramatic transformations in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world—the emergence and growth of the Caribbean plantation system and the rise of natural science. It argues that these transformations were not only deeply interconnected, but that together they established conditions fundamental to the development of a distinctive literary culture in the early Americas. In fact, eighteenth-century natural history as a literary genre largely took its shape from its practice in the Caribbean, an oft-studied region that was a prime source of wealth for all of Europe and the Americas. The formal evolution of colonial prose narrative, the author argues, was contingent upon the emergence of natural history writing, which itself emerged necessarily from within the context of Atlantic slavery and the production of tropical commodities. As he reestablishes the history of cultural exchange between the Caribbean and North America, the author recovers the importance of the West Indies in the formation of American literary and intellectual culture as well as its place in assessing the moral implications of colonial slavery.Less

Fatal Revolutions : Natural History, West Indian Slavery, and the Routes of American Literature

Christopher P. Iannini

Published in print: 2012-03-12

Drawing on letters, illustrations, engravings, and neglected manuscripts, this book connects two dramatic transformations in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world—the emergence and growth of the Caribbean plantation system and the rise of natural science. It argues that these transformations were not only deeply interconnected, but that together they established conditions fundamental to the development of a distinctive literary culture in the early Americas. In fact, eighteenth-century natural history as a literary genre largely took its shape from its practice in the Caribbean, an oft-studied region that was a prime source of wealth for all of Europe and the Americas. The formal evolution of colonial prose narrative, the author argues, was contingent upon the emergence of natural history writing, which itself emerged necessarily from within the context of Atlantic slavery and the production of tropical commodities. As he reestablishes the history of cultural exchange between the Caribbean and North America, the author recovers the importance of the West Indies in the formation of American literary and intellectual culture as well as its place in assessing the moral implications of colonial slavery.

This work explores a neglected aspect of the forced migration of African laborers to the Americas. Hundreds of thousands of captive Africans continued their journeys after the Middle Passage across ...
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This work explores a neglected aspect of the forced migration of African laborers to the Americas. Hundreds of thousands of captive Africans continued their journeys after the Middle Passage across the Atlantic. Colonial merchants purchased and then transshipped many of these captives to other colonies for resale. Not only did this trade increase death rates and the social and cultural isolation of Africans; it also fed the expansion of British slavery and trafficking of captives to foreign empires, contributing to Britain’s preeminence in the transatlantic slave trade by the mid-eighteenth century. The pursuit of profits from exploiting enslaved people as commodities facilitated exchanges across borders, loosening mercantile restrictions and expanding capitalist networks. Drawing on a database of more than 7,000 intercolonial slave trading voyages compiled from port records, newspapers, and merchant accounts, the book identifies and quantifies the major routes of this intercolonial slave trade. It argues that such voyages were a crucial component in the development of slavery in the Caribbean and North America and that trade in the unfree led to experimentation with free trade between empires.Less

Final Passages : The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619–1807

Gregory E. O‘Malley

Published in print: 2014-06-24

This work explores a neglected aspect of the forced migration of African laborers to the Americas. Hundreds of thousands of captive Africans continued their journeys after the Middle Passage across the Atlantic. Colonial merchants purchased and then transshipped many of these captives to other colonies for resale. Not only did this trade increase death rates and the social and cultural isolation of Africans; it also fed the expansion of British slavery and trafficking of captives to foreign empires, contributing to Britain’s preeminence in the transatlantic slave trade by the mid-eighteenth century. The pursuit of profits from exploiting enslaved people as commodities facilitated exchanges across borders, loosening mercantile restrictions and expanding capitalist networks. Drawing on a database of more than 7,000 intercolonial slave trading voyages compiled from port records, newspapers, and merchant accounts, the book identifies and quantifies the major routes of this intercolonial slave trade. It argues that such voyages were a crucial component in the development of slavery in the Caribbean and North America and that trade in the unfree led to experimentation with free trade between empires.

This book resituates the beginnings of English colonization in America in a Renaissance and post-Reformation context in which providential thought and conceptualizations of sovereignty were complexly ...
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This book resituates the beginnings of English colonization in America in a Renaissance and post-Reformation context in which providential thought and conceptualizations of sovereignty were complexly entwined. Fearful that God resented the timidity with which English monarchs brandished their divinely granted power, colonizers encouraged a bold reimagining of royal duties as extending across the vast Atlantic. At the same time, they theorized colonization as a calling to which all resolute Christians were lawfully bound, thus setting into motion a Virginian colonizing enterprise in which planters, even more than monarchs themselves, determined the contours of licit conduct on the other side of the ocean. In reconstructing the evolution of the Virginia venture from the era of Elizabethan captains to the Jacobean Virginia Company to the seventeenth-century politics of forging an English commonwealth in the New World, the book recovers especially the extent to which American colonization emerged from the same late Renaissance search for an enduring basis for civil polity that would also spur Thomas Hobbes to formulate his revolutionary idea of the sovereign state. Yet, Hobbes's notion of state sovereignty was a distinctly late arrival in the history of English colonization in America. As a result, Virginia's commonwealth set a precedent for colonies that treated their own civil integrity as comparable to that of the kingdom from which they had sprung.Less

For God, King, and People : Forging Commonwealth Bonds in Renaissance Virginia

Alexander B. Haskell

Published in print: 2015-01-12

This book resituates the beginnings of English colonization in America in a Renaissance and post-Reformation context in which providential thought and conceptualizations of sovereignty were complexly entwined. Fearful that God resented the timidity with which English monarchs brandished their divinely granted power, colonizers encouraged a bold reimagining of royal duties as extending across the vast Atlantic. At the same time, they theorized colonization as a calling to which all resolute Christians were lawfully bound, thus setting into motion a Virginian colonizing enterprise in which planters, even more than monarchs themselves, determined the contours of licit conduct on the other side of the ocean. In reconstructing the evolution of the Virginia venture from the era of Elizabethan captains to the Jacobean Virginia Company to the seventeenth-century politics of forging an English commonwealth in the New World, the book recovers especially the extent to which American colonization emerged from the same late Renaissance search for an enduring basis for civil polity that would also spur Thomas Hobbes to formulate his revolutionary idea of the sovereign state. Yet, Hobbes's notion of state sovereignty was a distinctly late arrival in the history of English colonization in America. As a result, Virginia's commonwealth set a precedent for colonies that treated their own civil integrity as comparable to that of the kingdom from which they had sprung.

In the years following the Glorious Revolution, independent slave traders challenged the charter of the Royal African Company (RAC) by asserting their natural rights as Britons to trade freely in ...
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In the years following the Glorious Revolution, independent slave traders challenged the charter of the Royal African Company (RAC) by asserting their natural rights as Britons to trade freely in enslaved Africans. This comprehensive history of the rise and fall of the RAC grounds the transatlantic slave trade in politics, not economic forces, analyzing the ideological arguments of the RAC and its opponents in Parliament and in public debate. Ultimately, it reasons that freedom became the rallying cry for those who wished to participate in the slave trade and therefore bolstered the expansion of the largest intercontinental forced migration in history.Less

Freedom’s Debt : The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672-1752

William A. Pettigrew

Published in print: 2013-12-30

In the years following the Glorious Revolution, independent slave traders challenged the charter of the Royal African Company (RAC) by asserting their natural rights as Britons to trade freely in enslaved Africans. This comprehensive history of the rise and fall of the RAC grounds the transatlantic slave trade in politics, not economic forces, analyzing the ideological arguments of the RAC and its opponents in Parliament and in public debate. Ultimately, it reasons that freedom became the rallying cry for those who wished to participate in the slave trade and therefore bolstered the expansion of the largest intercontinental forced migration in history.

In early Pennsylvania, translation served as a utopian tool creating harmony across linguistic, religious, and ethnic differences. This book challenges the long-standing historical myth—first ...
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In early Pennsylvania, translation served as a utopian tool creating harmony across linguistic, religious, and ethnic differences. This book challenges the long-standing historical myth—first promulgated by Benjamin Franklin—that language diversity posed a threat to communal coherence. It deftly traces the pansophist and Neoplatonist philosophies of European reformers that informed the radical English and German Protestants who founded the “holy experiment.” Their belief in hidden yet persistent links between human language and the word of God impelled their vision of a common spiritual idiom. Translation became the search for underlying correspondences between diverse human expressions of the divine and served as a model for reconciliation and inclusiveness. Drawing on German and English archival sources, the author examines iconic translations that engendered community in colonial Pennsylvania, including William Penn's translingual promotional literature, Francis Daniel Pastorius's multilingual poetics, Ephrata's “angelic” singing and transcendent calligraphy, the Moravians' polyglot missions, and the common language of suffering for peace among Quakers, Pietists, and Mennonites. By revealing a mystical quest for unity, he presents a compelling counternarrative to monolingualism and Enlightenment empiricism in eighteenth-century America.Less

A Harmony of the Spirits : Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania

Patrick M. Erben

Published in print: 2012-06-10

In early Pennsylvania, translation served as a utopian tool creating harmony across linguistic, religious, and ethnic differences. This book challenges the long-standing historical myth—first promulgated by Benjamin Franklin—that language diversity posed a threat to communal coherence. It deftly traces the pansophist and Neoplatonist philosophies of European reformers that informed the radical English and German Protestants who founded the “holy experiment.” Their belief in hidden yet persistent links between human language and the word of God impelled their vision of a common spiritual idiom. Translation became the search for underlying correspondences between diverse human expressions of the divine and served as a model for reconciliation and inclusiveness. Drawing on German and English archival sources, the author examines iconic translations that engendered community in colonial Pennsylvania, including William Penn's translingual promotional literature, Francis Daniel Pastorius's multilingual poetics, Ephrata's “angelic” singing and transcendent calligraphy, the Moravians' polyglot missions, and the common language of suffering for peace among Quakers, Pietists, and Mennonites. By revealing a mystical quest for unity, he presents a compelling counternarrative to monolingualism and Enlightenment empiricism in eighteenth-century America.

This book was written and published in London in 1705, one of the earliest printed English-language histories about North America by an author born there. Like his brother-in-law William Byrd II, the ...
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This book was written and published in London in 1705, one of the earliest printed English-language histories about North America by an author born there. Like his brother-in-law William Byrd II, the author of this book Robert Beverley was a scion of Virginia's planter elite, personally ambitious and at odds with royal governors in the colony. As a native-born American—most famously claiming “I am an Indian”—he provided English readers with the first thoroughgoing account of the province's past, natural history, Indians, and current politics and society. This new edition situates the author and his book in the context of the metropolitan-provincial political and cultural issues of his day and explores the many contradictions embedded in his narrative.Less

The History and Present State of Virginia : A New Edition with an Introduction by Susan Scott Parrish

Robert Beverley

Published in print: 2013-05-13

This book was written and published in London in 1705, one of the earliest printed English-language histories about North America by an author born there. Like his brother-in-law William Byrd II, the author of this book Robert Beverley was a scion of Virginia's planter elite, personally ambitious and at odds with royal governors in the colony. As a native-born American—most famously claiming “I am an Indian”—he provided English readers with the first thoroughgoing account of the province's past, natural history, Indians, and current politics and society. This new edition situates the author and his book in the context of the metropolitan-provincial political and cultural issues of his day and explores the many contradictions embedded in his narrative.

Stepfamilies are not a modern invention. George Washington, the father of the United States, was a stepfather, but despite this reality, the history of stepfamilies in America has yet to be fully ...
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Stepfamilies are not a modern invention. George Washington, the father of the United States, was a stepfather, but despite this reality, the history of stepfamilies in America has yet to be fully explored. This book examines the stereotypes and realities of colonial stepfamilies and reveals them as important figures in early United States domestic history. Cultural views of stepfamilies during this time placed great strain on stepmothers and stepfathers, and both were viewed as either unfit substitutes or as potentially unstable influences. Nowhere were these concepts stronger than in white, middle class families, and the book chronicles the paradoxical view of stepparents—a product of necessary remarriage at a time of war and disease—and the stress this placed on people and families. The book shares the stories of real stepfamilies in early New England, investigating the relationship between prejudice and lived experience, and, in the end, offers a new way of looking at family units throughout history and the cultural stereotypes that still effect stepfamilies today.Less

History of Stepfamilies in Early America

Lisa Wilson

Published in print: 2014-11-03

Stepfamilies are not a modern invention. George Washington, the father of the United States, was a stepfather, but despite this reality, the history of stepfamilies in America has yet to be fully explored. This book examines the stereotypes and realities of colonial stepfamilies and reveals them as important figures in early United States domestic history. Cultural views of stepfamilies during this time placed great strain on stepmothers and stepfathers, and both were viewed as either unfit substitutes or as potentially unstable influences. Nowhere were these concepts stronger than in white, middle class families, and the book chronicles the paradoxical view of stepparents—a product of necessary remarriage at a time of war and disease—and the stress this placed on people and families. The book shares the stories of real stepfamilies in early New England, investigating the relationship between prejudice and lived experience, and, in the end, offers a new way of looking at family units throughout history and the cultural stereotypes that still effect stepfamilies today.

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